“No! Miles, no, not even a little. When things just become normal it’s impossible to see them for what they really are unless someone shows you. I would never have realised I was getting in my own way if not for you.”
He sighed again, rolling to stretch like he just needed to move.“After New York perhaps. It’s too disruptive to make changes now, especially since . . .”
Since his parents seemed to control everything, I thought, filling in his unfinished sentence.
On the bedside table, my phone buzzed. Once. Twice. A third time. Not close enough together to be a call, but I reached over to be sure. Three messages from Tomas.
Macca got into a fight in the bar with Callahan’s damn trainer.
The hotel staff are pissed, Tarelli needs stitches and Leo Mannering just showed up.
If he’s with you, please get him down here.
“Shit, we have to go,” I said, climbing over Miles only for my hand to slip on the edge of the bed, sending me face first into the floor in what had to be the least graceful exit from a bed in the history of clandestine sexual encounters.
“What the fuck? Are you okay?”
“Yeah, ow. I’m fine. Here.” I tossed him my phone as I snatched up my hastily abandoned clothes.
A beat of silence while Miles read the messages, then he was off the bed with a groan of, “Oh my god.”
We pulled ourselves together as fast as we could, and reached the hotel bar to find a section had been cordoned off, its floor glittering with broken glass. Amid a general babble of excitement, necks craned and fingers pointed and I wanted to sink into the tiles.
A harried manager stood waiting. “Mr Callahan and Mr Russo?” she asked, and given the circumstances it was ridiculousthat I liked the sound of our names spoken together so much that I wanted to ask her to say them again.
“Yeah,” Miles said, far more sensible. “What happened?”
The woman pursed her lips, and either unwilling or unable to explain, led us instead into an empty side passage. Shouting emanated from a closed door at the end, a sound that swelled as we approached until it covered even the chatter from the bar. Without pause, Miles pushed open the door and strode in, causing the symphony of harried voices to stutter into silence.
The room was a small function space, and there beneath the white fluorescents, Macca sat perched on a table with an ice pack pressed to his face, Tomas scowling like a thundercloud beside him. On the other side of the anaemic room, a paramedic was cleaning a nasty gash on Tarelli’s eyebrow. He also had a split lip and blood on his shirt and Leo Mannering firmly in his corner. The rest of Miles’s team were gathered around him – his assistant coach, his strength and conditioning coach, his physio, and Tina, biting her lip and trying to make herself as small as possible.
“What the fuck is going on here?” Miles demanded, walking in with all the authority of being the tallest, angriest man in the room. For a moment, even Leo Mannering’s jaw snapped shut.
Only for a moment. “What’s going on here,” he said, his sneer full of moral superiority, “is that we’re laying assault charges.”
“No, we are not,” Tina said. “This will be hard enough to smooth over—”
She’d hardly managed three words before everyone was shouting again, voices growing louder and louder until Miles snapped, “Quit it! One at a time.” He turned to his bleeding trainer. “What happened?”
“He just came at me,” Tarelli said, pointing at Macca. “I had to defend myself.”
“Oh, like you did nothing to deserve it, you cunt,” Macca spat back, still nestling the ice pack against his freckled cheek.
Tarelli gestured like this statement was all the evidence one needed, but Miles ignored this to ask, “Well, what does he think you did?”
“I don’t know. We were just talking and he—”
“Bullshit.” Macca dropped his ice pack and rose, Tomas’s hand on his arm all that kept him from striding across the floor for another bout. “Tell him what you said. Go on. Word for word.”
My already deep sense of foreboding plummeted. This was going to bebad.
“Call off your dog, Russo,” Leo Mannering snapped at me. “You might want to vet your staff more carefully. Unless you like travelling with violent—”
Miles spun on him. “Shut. Up.” He held up a peremptory finger. “No one else says another word until Tarelli tells me what started this.”
“We were just joking around and then he went for me!” Tarelli said.
“Joking around,” Miles repeated, nodding slowly. “All right.” He turned to Macca. “What did he say?”
